December 19, 2015

December 19, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my third response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). Bostow, who, unlike Skinner, doesn’t seem to recognize the importance of Verbal Behavior (1957), wants his readers to believe that “our cultural contingencies” – and not the contingencies that produce high rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and low rates of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) - “now favor behavior that produce immediate small consequences at the expense of alternative behaviors that produce delayed but larger consequences (Grant, 2007).” Like so many other behaviorists, he is interested in anything except how we are actually talking with one another.  

Scholars like him, sadly there are many, are caught in the paper-trap, the myth that writing more papers will change the way in which we talk. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that he obviously refers to his own personal life when he states that “Unfortunately, the relatively less advanced state of the behavioral sciences provides little support for the development of interventions that help make life more rewarding in large but delayed ways.” As far as I am concerned behavioral science provides ample “support for the interventions that help make life more rewarding in large but delayed way.” If behaviorist would bother to verify, they would find out that SVB is such an intervention. 

The difference between me and Bostow is that I recognize the distinction between SVB and NVB, which is an extension of radical behaviorism. The dismal remark that “time is not on our side” when it comes to “isolating the controlling variables” of “why consuming behaviors persist even when individuals are presented with opposing facts and alternative options”, signifies Bostow’s NVB.

If “opposing facts and alternative options” are presented in SVB, they will be accepted as only SVB stimulates us to do that. Our current way of talking, which is mostly NVB, prevents us from accepting the facts.  The author suggests that probability of responding will be increased by “arranging magazines, books and so on in a sequence” by keeping “prompts in sight.” They reason “out of sight out of behavior.” 

To have SVB, we must keep track of the sound of our own voice while we speak. We engage in NVB each time we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. However, we will not be listening to ourselves as long as we witness nonverbal threatening behavior. As long as nobody prompts us, with their tone of voice, we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak